Bulls Battle Bears » My Investments

Panic has Opened an Opportunity

Aman@BullsBattleBears — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:35:52 +0000

How many times have you looked at a stock and wished its share prices were more affordable? How many times has that wish come true? Unless you went on a buying spree like me during the “economic meltdown” recently, your probably not watching the right company.

Right now, (BP) is on a drop. Unfortunately, the reason for this drop has been an enviromnental disaster than we all have seen in the media for more than a month now. Like any moment of crisis, there are people that panic, and for many stock holders, they opted to sell and push the stock price to basically half of what it was a few months back. This is when I walked in.

Like a sale at your favorite store, its not often you can get a solid company with share prices in the $30 range. I managed to snag 150 shares at $29.75 and again bought another 100 shares at $30.75. These are prices I’m comfortable with, but have budgeted funds to purchase another 150 shares if the prices goes lower.

Whats my goal? I’m holding this stock for one year at minimum. BP has litigation to take care of, and also clean-up costs which might hurt the balance sheets looking forwards for the next 3 quarters. But it looks like the stock price has factored those losses into the price. Finally, with less oil available to consumers, the price/barrel will go up which means the revenue will not be as bad as many might think.

I’m not going to tell anybody to bet the farm on BP, but this is a solid company. Exxon went through a major crisis when the Valdez leaked, but the company still exists today and its share prices charged forward after getting over the bump.

News:
White House Steps Up Pressure on BP, Shareholders

Here is the Market Close for Monday, June 14th

Happy Investing!
Aman, MBA

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Should Have Sold

Aman@BullsBattleBears — Sat, 08 May 2010 01:50:49 +0000

To some is might seem like I only post when I profit, but with the busy schedule of myself for the past few days, I missed the boat on opportunities to get out of a few key stocks which were up and now are sitting at much lower prices. There is no true logic or reasoning I can come up with except for the sheer greed of being up significantly and trying to squeeze a few more drops before walking away. I have emphasized this in the past as a way people lose their shirts and sadly caught myself in the same trap. One stock I am caught holding the bag with now is (OCNF) which I was at one point up 20+% and now am down a pathetic 35%.

For a while now, a lot of stocks have been trending upwards and it all came to a stand still when the Greek market crisis took more central stage in the media. With the thought of another market doom scenario in the minds of many, people have stated to pull money off the table to take profits and preserve capital which I should have done.

Instead, I held onto denial and tried to ride this wave. Wrong move.

This week, the markets have ended on drops we did not see in a while. All three boards have erased all the gains they recorded this year. At close, the S&P 500 was 6.4 per cent down on the week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 5.7 per cent on the week while the Nasdaq Composite had dropped 7.9 per cent over the week.

The Vix index, a measure of market volatility, was up 26 per cent yesterday to 41.32, and 87.4 per cent higher on the week.

What does next week hold? Its seems like volatility is going to linger for a while. More people are jumping back into gold and USD which could not be a bad idea. With the good rise in the number of new jobs truly failing to push the markets into a positive trend, the better housing numbers also failing to do the same, we are going to need some time to let the wound of the Greek crisis to heal and hope that the next country in line to make a similar announcement to either find a resolution without public turmoil or wait long enough that the aftershock does not topple the markets. Spain is facing problems that will need to be dealt with soon.

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Dumped Ambac Financial Group Shares

Aman@BullsBattleBears — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:53:21 +0000

24 hours ago, I was looking long and perhaps greedy in trying to squeeze every drop from (ABK). When the markets opened today, I was on cloud nine was the stock was strongly over $3/share ($3.39 to be exact) before the fun stopped.

Profit taking, and a note from JP Morgan began to take center stage and although I was willing to walk away with a 100% profit, why would I not get out now when I see the knife falling? As soon as I was able to get to a computer, I started to dump my shares and managed to get out before the stock took a serious swing towards the red.

(ABK) it seems, according to the JP Morgan note, still has a lot of negative qualities (read this article)

Summary:
Bought: 4700 shares @ $0.66
Sold: 4700 shares @ 2.61

Total profit on (ABK) = $9165

With this profit, I have begun to watch another stock that looks tempting. Although it does have a strong risk, the swings are interesting on AMCORE Financial (AMFI). I actually had plan to get in at $0.65/share and the stock did begin to drop towards this price before touching $0.70 and moving back upwards. I can see this stock pull down again before another run up. If it does not happen, I’m not going to lose any sleep.

Happy Investing!

Aman, MBA

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